In a large-scale public communications network, a calling party may not always be successful in connecting to a desired called party destination. Connection failures can be attributed to many causes, including the unavailability of the called party and the possibility of network blockages and other call-affecting network failures at many points across the network. The impact of these failed calls can be significant.
For example, direct marketers, in particular, generate substantial revenues from buyers who call in response to advertisements placed in wide-reaching media such as TV and radio, the Internet, and newspapers. The direct marketers often provide 800 numbers in their advertisements to encourage buyer response by telephone. Broadly placed direct marketing advertisements can generate high levels of potential buyer demand across a wide geographic area. This demand can result in high associated 800 service call volumes, which can exceed network capacities, and thereby lead to heightened incidences of network blockage and call failure. The resulting failed calls can represent a significant loss in potential buyers and in potential revenues for the direct marketers.
Some information about the call attempts made by these otherwise lost buyers is currently available. For example, caller identification data can be captured by a local exchange carrier (LEC), and forwarded to other LECs and interexchange carriers (IXCs) in the calling chain (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No.5,530,741, issued to Rubin on Jun. 25, 1996). And network management systems supporting individual network operators are capable of tracking call attempt failures in association with caller identification data (see, e.g., 5ESS Input/Output Messages, Manual No. 235-600-700/750, Issue 15.01C, Lucent Technologies Inc., Mar. 1998, describing an MDII message used, among other things, to report call attempt failure information to local and centralized network maintenance consoles where 5ESS switch performance is monitored). However, while some of the required information components exist, no single, integrated mechanism has heretofore been developed to collect failed call attempt information in a reliable, integrated fashion from the multiple exchange carriers that collectively provide, for example, 800 service to prospective buyers in a direct marketing environment.